


please eat

by mwildsides



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gore, M/M, Mental Instability, Necrophilia, Sort Of, Vore, Zombie Sam, generally unhealthy shit, my inability to keep medical jargon out of my writing, the winchester boys' unending obsession with each other's corpses, uhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 12:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mwildsides/pseuds/mwildsides
Summary: After all, what exactly did he intend to do when he brought Dean’s corpse back to the bunker, laying him in bed like he was just passed out drunk? Probably the same thing Dean had thought of when he was sitting in an abandoned, rainy ghost town, staring at his brother’s body for three days straight.





	please eat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DickBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DickBaggins/gifts).



> many endless thanks to my dearest janis for helping me raise this disgusting child from infancy. happy halloween.

Their life had been a trainwreck at best, so Dean couldn’t really call what he did going off the rails; that had happened years ago and many times. So he promises Sam he’ll do what Sam wants with tears in his eyes and a miserable smile on his face, an expression mirrored on his brother’s ashen face. 

 

It’s one of the last times Sam wears any human emotions, when he’s dying, and hiccuping sobs into Dean’s shoulder on the dirty linoleum in the breakroom of some abandoned store. It’s all smeary with blood, post crime scene, dragged boot-heels, shuffling knees, a hand print from where Dean pushes himself up to go fill up his clip. Or at least convince a severely anemic Sam that he is. 

 

Sam’s been having a hard time keeping his head up or his eyes open at this point, and he’s running a deadly fever, so he doesn’t notice when Dean slides the magazine out of the gun that’s still mostly empty, then clicks it back into place after some feigned rattling. 

 

It’s enough, convinces Sam. Dean will feel sick about this one last deception, this one last thing that says he fucked up Sam’s life way before this, but he is sick. He’s very sick. 

  
  


-

  
  


Sam’s hands curl in on him, fist in his clothing, slow signs of “life”. It’s been a little while, the room stinks of old blood and the freshly dead, and Dean feels like his corpse is waking up too. Of course he’s spiked with excitement, feeling Sam move again, feeling him reach for big brother like he has since he was young enough to grasp. 

 

Then it tips over into violence, Sam’s body exerting the strength it doesn’t really recognize it has to catch Dean when he starts to move so he can look at Sam’s face. The grip hurts, and Sam’s eyes don’t see anything they recognize when they drift to Dean. They’re the same changeable shade, his irises anyway. The whites are a sickly yellow-green, the vessels burst in his left to color his sclera deoxygenated bloody purple. 

 

His mouth opens, wordless, hungry, like he will a thousand times after this. 

  
  


-

  
  


Dean doesn’t know a whole lot about the preservation of corpses, let alone reanimated ones, so he’s flying by the seat of his pants when he packs a softly growling Sam into the Impala. 

 

It’ll come back to bite him (ha ha), but for now he knows that cold will help, it’ll hold off decomposition--or at least he thinks as much. He hopes so. 

 

(and not Pacific Northwest cold, either, he needs a dry cold as much as Dean wishes they could retire in the mountains of Washington) 

 

The drive is long and shitty, littered with the swaggering corpses of Sam’s kin, burned out cars, sixteen-wheelers tipped over and looted. Small towns Dean used to like, turned ghost towns, though the smaller, more secluded ones provide him with a few supplies he needs, and he checks out some mountain homes there too, though they don’t meet up to Dean’s “Sam needs”. 

 

Though they aren’t really Sam’s needs, are they. He’s only got one right now, which Dean is working hard to prevent, just because it’ll likely come at the cost of his life, maybe Sam’s as well. If you could call it a life. 

 

Whatever it is, it’s been prolonged selfishly on Dean’s part, and he’s gone over it in his head a few million times between the time Sam stopped breathing to the time Dean decides there’s no point in it. Sam’s consciousness is gone, the one that Dean  _ knows  _ would disapprove of this, because Dean would do what his baby brother had done if he were dying. 

 

_ Don’t you let me live like that Sammy, don’t you let me kill people, don’t - you gotta -  _

 

Sam had gripped the barrel of Dean’s gun, white-knuckled, when he made Dean swear, and now he wonders if Sam knew that Dean wouldn’t do it anyway. If that was a flicker of resigned sadness because he knew his body was going to keep going after his… soul? had left his body. 

 

He may well have--after all, what exactly did he intend to do when he brought Dean’s corpse back to the bunker, laying him in bed like he was just passed out drunk? Probably the same thing Dean had thought of when he was sitting in an abandoned, rainy ghost town, staring at his brother’s body for three days straight. 

 

It’s the culmination of their love story, really. Stay together at all costs. 

  
  


-

  
  


A nearly-subarctic butcher shop ends up being home. It’s an old place, standalone with the owner’s home above it, the man himself still sitting in his favorite old chair while his sweetbreads were rotting off the walls behind him. Bummer. 

 

But there’s a walk-in freezer, no longer with power yet still cold enough down here that it’ll keep Sam whole. 

 

Dean wipes at the bloody foam leaking out of Sam’s nose, the corner of his mouth, avoids his brother’s perpetually roaming maw, and cleans the freezer of rotted food, shelves, and any edges Sam could tear his already delicate skin on. It was Dean’s fault, letting Sam stumble out of the car like he had any of the coordination he once had. Something caught his forearm, pulled a gash in his skin that gaped open, helpless, bloodless, just there. Sam didn’t give two shits, he was just happy he was in biting distance of a warmer body. 

 

He was on his second gag already, chewed through the first one on their week-long pilgrimage up here. Dean would have to think of something else besides fabric, but he takes it off before he goes down to clean up the freezer, so Sam can clean up the butcher. 

  
  


-

  
  


Sam doesn’t talk, of course, but he does make sounds, and for Dean that’s almost as good. It’s better than silence, but it’s hard honestly, because they’re so so familiar. Little throat growls, possessive, soft puppy whimpers, needy. The deep groan of a stubbed toe, or falling into bed, sated to the bone. 

 

Except all of those are noises of the starved, of a hunger that only slightly abates after Sam starts to weaken. 

 

But the first few nights when Dean is trying to sleep, he spends it listening to Sam snarl and spit and claw his fingernails off on the inside of the walk-in freezer. He thumps at the door, banging against it, and the only thing keeping Dean from rushing down there to console his baby boy is the fact that Sam will never scream his name. He’ll never ask for Dean, never wake up from a nightmare and reach for his big brother. He’s stumbling blind. Pointedly not-screaming. 

 

Like most things in the coming months, Dean gets used to it. He lays in bed upstairs and closes his eyes and thinks about Sam and his sounds. It’s tough. It has been tough, Dean separating his Sam and this Sam, though he thinks they’re technically still both his. Alive Sam and Dead Sam, but it’s hard to separate them, because they’re the same where it counts; the eyes, his hair, the timbre of his undead groaning, the familiar breadth of his shoulders that very nearly fools Dean into thinking his brother is still there with him with a cup of coffee, staring out the window. 

 

That he’s not clawing at the dirty pane because he see’s something living that he could maybe consume behind the shop. 

 

And because Dean can’t separate his Sam’s, he closes his eyes and jerks off to the visceral sounds Sam still makes even if the house is permeated with the smell of putrefaction. 

  
  
  


-

  
  


It’s just a Sam thing, the stench. 

 

Like crudely stapling the gash on his arm closed because it’s faster than stitching, and Dean can hold Sam by the neck while he does it while his brother reaches with his mouth. 

 

A Sam thing, like the unknowing in his eyes when Dean dresses him every few days after he’s leaked some combination of fluids onto one of his shirts, or when he sits Sam down on the couch just...to spend some time. Dean reads, medical books mostly because even if he did this awful thing, even if he’s beyond this, Dean is still going to take care of his brother the best he can. 

 

When his hair starts getting a bit too long, Dean ties it gently back, careful not to pull patches from his scalp, because Sam’s skin is like crepe paper now. Delicate, sallow, waxy, cold compared to Dean. Warm when Dean’s had a hand on him to steady Sam’s suddenly clumsy feet, he soaks up body heat, but Dean keeps the warmth to a minimum. 

 

He dresses himself warmly, rigs himself up a stove in his bedroom so he’s not always freezing, and Sam stays nice and cool down in his domain where the butcher used to disassemble sides of beef. It’s a good homeostasis, and it works, much to Dean’s surprise. He doesn’t know if he’d call himself happy, but he sure as shit isn’t as miserable as he thought he’d be. 

 

That could just be because he’s gone completely insane, living with his brother’s walking corpse, loving it. Off the rails. 

  
  


-

  
  


Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though, and they might be the only things keeping Dean from blowing his brains out and letting Sam have him for dinner (well, he thinks about doing that anyway, and it has nothing to do with suicide). 

 

Because Sam is rotting, he’s still decomposing even if the cold and the virus slows it, Dean has to brush his teeth. 

 

He grabs a special enamel-strengthening toothpaste from the local general store, where at the time it was looted, no one wanted toothpaste, just medicine and food and water and toilet paper. Understandable, but Dean thanks the townspeople for giving up their butcher and toothpaste for him and his brother. 

It’s much like trying to brush your dog’s teeth, where they fight you the whole time by trying to tongue the toothbrush back out of their mouth, or bite it like it’s going to hurt them. Sam has the advantage of hands, even if they lack fingernails, to try and fight Dean off. His efforts bruise Dean all up and down his arms, even if his strength is waning with decomposition. 

 

With one thumb hooked inside Sam’s cheek to pull it wide and wedge the toothbrush in, Dean scrubs clinically at his brother’s teeth. Sam used to do that sometimes just before he shoved his dick between Dean’s lips just to make room. Make him drool, which Dean does his best not to think about.

 

“‘S for your own good, Sammy,” he mutters under his breath like his brother is going to care. Like you would if you were talking to a dog. 

 

Sam hisses and claws and gnashes like a drenched tomcat, but it’s honestly kind of funny. His eyes scrunch up, brows furrowing, head tipped back to try and twist out of Dean’s reach as he attempts to push Dean away. It’s terribly funny, actually, and turns out to be the first time Dean laughs in months. He laughs till he’s sobbing, hands curled in Sam’s shirt, head tipped to his bony chest, and the toothbrush a little discolored from whatever is going on in Sam’s mouth these days. 

 

And Sam, like he’s dazed from the assault, let’s Dean clutch him like that for a while. He doesn’t breathe anymore, but Dean imagines he’d be panting. 

 

“Sorry,” he says softly, when the tears are gone and he twists his face to press an ear to Sam’s sternum. There are no more inside sounds, save for the vague vocal rattling Sam always does, his vocal chords dried up like animal tendon. 

  
  


-

  
  


A few days later it’s time to redress Sam again, and why it didn’t strike Dean before is a mystery to him, but generally he tries not to look at things too closely when he has Sam bare. He puts things on as quick as possible so he doesn’t witness all the ways Sam is changing, dying, slipping away from him slowly. 

 

But he  _ watches _ Dean. Doesn’t know what’s happening, of course, but his kaleidoscope eyes still peer down at big brother like they’re sharing something tender. It’s that heavy for Dean, when he catches his Sammy watching, kindling a little spark of hope that his care has brought Sam back to himself in any capacity. 

 

_ Is _ that recognition there? Or is it just Dean, needing, hoping, so out of his mind he’s willing to delude himself into thinking there is. 

 

He’s undressing his brother while Sam watches his every movement, and it’s so heavy. Things are different. 

 

So Dean unbuttons Sam’s jeans, pushes them down even though he didn’t know what he’s expecting. Sam’s dead. Before the virus made him sick, he basically bled out. He’s all dried up. 

 

But Dean’s still curious. A little while ago he read corpses could have an orgasm if a specific nerve was oxygenated, and he told Sam out loud even though his brother couldn’t care. Maybe he’d care if Dean could do it. Maybe if he frowned through the teeth brushing and clawed at the freezer door, he could feel good, too. 

 

Sam’s cock still has some of that silky texture even though the pulsing body heat is long gone when Dean cups it in his hand just to feel it. It’s intact, too, same size, if a little...wilted looking. Like that kind of grey that pink roses get right before they  _ really  _ start dying. Rotting fruit.

 

Dean closes his eyes, swallows the inexplicable lump in his throat, and rubs his palm along Sam’s dick. Nothing twitches, no sweet gasps, a hand on his forearm and  _ Dean… _

 

Sam is peering at him still, unblinking, and not even confused, he doesn’t care he doesn’t know what’s going on. He just doesn’t care, and Dean doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. 

 

Can a living corpse consent? Do they have will at all? 

 

Those are thoughts that flit across Dean’s fried brain, and they’re things Dean can’t concern himself anymore, like how the question of whether or not fucking his baby brother was wrong. Of course it was, but he did it anyway and they both loved it. 

 

He doesn’t have moral compunctions anymore, so he curls his fingers around Sam’s limp cock and strokes it with purpose, and steps close. 

 

“Hey,” he whispers, close enough that he can smell Sam. Doesn’t bother him anymore. It’s Sam. “You feel that?” Dean asks even if he knows the answer. That’s not the point. 

 

Even though his face is starting to look a bit sunken, Sam is still beautiful. His bloodless skin makes his eyes look haunting, but Dean’s always found Sam attractive, whether he was sick or bloody or drenched in sunlight, hair long or short, dead or alive. Dean’s darling, why does life have any bearing on beauty? 

 

It doesn’t, for Dean. 

 

He tips his face up until he can press his mouth to Sam’s dry, cool lips, chaste, fragile maybe. His other hand lifts to the side of Sam’s neck, tender like it used to be, like he can drag Sam in deeper and suddenly Sam will come back to life, jolt and clutch at Dean’s waist and walk them back to the bed and fuck Dean clean through the mattress with his reanimated dick. 

 

It’s not quite Disney Cinderella, but there is a bit of a lurch on Sam’s part. Pushing into Dean’s space, mouths still sealed together as both hands come up to palm Dean’s shoulders, leave more fingerprint bruises with his bony fingers. 

 

Just that takes Dean apart. He whimpers and opens his mouth a little, kinda tentative before he slips his tongue out to lick into Sam’s open mouth. It’s scary, honestly. The taste is stale, but minty from his own efforts. Dry. Sam’s tongue feels almost like a dried up sea sponge. But he’s gripping Dean and there’s pressure behind his lips that are pulling back from his teeth, his head tilts when his mouth opens a little wider for Dean’s. 

 

There are inexplicable tears on Dean’s cheeks and his dick is chubbing up quick, so he doesn’t even care when Sam snaps, because there isn’t flesh between his teeth. Dean can slip his tongue in to stroke it along Sam’s when his brother opens again, making a kiss-rhythm of it each time Sam tries to bite his tongue off. 

 

Dean pants and worms his way closer, wraps his arms around Sam’s shoulders and neck, panting into the now-damp cavern of his hungry mouth. He doesn’t even have to force them together, because Sam is doing a leaning in of his own, holding Dean in his way, but it’s fucking perfect, it’s everything. Sam lets him push them a step or two back to the dresser, and Dean forgets Sam’s limp cock for his own, grinding against Sam’s hip and thigh. 

 

He kisses and kisses and kisses Sam, for an eternity, gets his lips and tongue and teeth all wet again until Sam’s chin is slick with Dean’s spit. 

 

“God, Sammy,” he breathes, hot into Sam’s gaped mouth.

 

His fingers bunch the fabric of Dean’s shirt at his back and pull, pull like they want to tear but no, Sam’s holding him closer! Tugging him tighter, and Dean laughs, watery, hysterical, hips hitching to rub off like a teenager against Sam. But this is everything, this is  _ Sam,  _ this is how they are! Life, death, heaven, hell, it doesn’t fucking matter, Dean is always going to be Sam’s and Sam is always going to be Dean’s. 

 

On one pass, Dean isn’t quick enough, and Sam’s teeth close down on his lip, but it doesn’t even scare him--it feels so fucking good, like it always did, and he moans, holds Sam impossibly closer. 

 

“Fuck me,” he gasps in the space between, doesn’t care that Sam doesn’t care. They’ve gotten this far, haven’t they? And shit, he’s close enough to coming as it is, maybe they could figure this out. Oxygenated nerves. 

 

Sam liked dirty talk, once upon a time, now he makes no noise, and gnaws at Dean’s mouth. Presses in harder, bites down when he feels like it might get him a mouthful of flesh, and it very nearly does when Dean is desperately close to coming. He’s out of pace, kissing Sam messy and without finesse, putting his concentration into humping Sam’s leg and hip, so when Sam’s teeth sink into the tip of his tongue he isn’t expecting it, isn’t expecting the pain to rocket straight down his spine and trip his orgasm like a fucking land mine. 

 

He digs his fingers into Sam’s scalp too hard as he cries out, both for the euphoria and the pain and the blood in his mouth. It’s been a long time since he’s come even a fraction of that hard, so it’s hard to stop anything he’s doing, riding out the aftershocks as he rolls his hips slow, and Sam nurses on his tongue. 

 

Yeah, he really is, too. He’s pushing in again, stepping to push Dean  _ back, god to the bed, please,  _ pushing, pushing, pushing to get at Dean’s tongue. It seems impossible but he sucks Dean’s tongue into his mouth, licking at the gash he’d left and trying to get the piece he’d all but bit off between his molars. 

 

But that stuff is minor, like the fact that Dean probably couldn’t pull away now if he wanted to. He’s just flying high on a thing he’d never thought he’d have again. Something familiar, even the blood. Sam devouring him. Dean is at peace, and Sam is starting to snarl. 

 

Eventually Dean had to leave him, bring himself back into a reality where he could do this again. He doesn’t really care about his tongue,  _ just the tip baby _ , so he let Sam tear off the piece that was hanging on by a thread anyhow, and that’s Dean’s opportunity to slip away while Sam chews. Dean pushes his head up, looks at Sam’s working jaw, his mouth smeared with spit and blood, and how his eyes are focused elsewhere like he’s eating a bowl of cereal, distracted. 

 

A little insulting really, when Dean thinks about how much all that meant to him, but he staggers away to stitch himself up and feel lucky anyway. 

  
  


-

  
  


That night Dean lulls himself to sleep with expired Vicodin and cheap whiskey, staring up at the cracked ceiling for a while and not for the first time, he’s ready to die. Especially if it’s from a bite Sam gave him. Especially if it means getting to spend forever like this with Sam in undead silence. Moaning at one another, bumping off of walls and back against each other. 

 

He’s at peace with that. 

 

Only when he wakes up in the morning, he’s no worse for wear. Well, other than his throbbing tongue—there’s no fever, no shakes. Dean is still just Dean, and he doesn’t know how he feels about it, so he goes down to get his baby brother. 

 

He doesn’t try what he did the night before for a while. 

  
  


-

  
  


Sam has his own ways of loving, like that, and Dean gets used to them, hoards these tiny gifts away like he should have been doing with food, but he doesn’t have much of an appetite most days. He’s thinning out like Sam. 

 

They’re wasting away with the flies that Dean is a little sick of fighting, but no one was concerned with keeping fly paper either, so Sam’s unwanted guests rarely leave whole. 

 

Not that Sam cares about them either. 

 

Like a cat, Sam seems to enjoy staring at the window. Outside things move, outside things are sometimes alive, sort of, because squirrels apparently are immune to whatever the fuck killed Dean’s brother and not him. But Sam will watch out the window for so long that when Dean comes to get him, maybe to put him to bed or what have you, the flies have made a home on Sam’s jaundiced eyes. 

 

Sometimes Dean can forget his baby brother is dead, he’s used to the smell and Sam’s all done leaking god knows what, but that...that’s always a lot to take. He shoos them away and Sam’s attention is caught by his hand, still catlike. 

 

“Hey buddy,” Dean will say. He still talks to Sam a lot.

  
  


-

  
  


Sam has his ways of loving, and Dean has made peace with that, because what is more loving than wanting to devour your partner whole? 

 

Dean thinks about it a lot, at night, when things are dead silent and his teeth start to worry at his lip and his hands start to itch. Legs start to shift, they miss the inevitable, uncompromising breadth of Sam, among a lot of other things. And Dean starts to reminisce on the things he misses, which is bad and something he knows is a scab not worth picking at but anymore, what the fuck does it matter anyway? 

He misses the kid whose virginity he took. He misses his huge little brother. He misses his huge, encompassing, consuming little brother, and how he’d block out much of the world when he was above Dean. All that hard muscle, the coordination and fluid movements were gone now, leaving Dean’s once glorious boy a corpse that probably needed bumpers. He gouged another gash into his hip last week when he ran into the marble countertop that Dean had lovingly sewn up in a rare moment of calm for Sammy. He’d laid back for Dean, after a bit of cajoling. 

 

It was a heady thing to see, the haunting, disgusting, beautiful sprawl of what was left of Sam, even worse to be so close and not be able to do much of anything. Dean mended the skin like it was silk, and pressed a kiss to Sam’s concave stomach. 

 

But that made him think about what Sam wanted, what he needed the way Dean craved him in the physical. What is comparable for Sam, but Dean’s bitten-off tongue is enough of an answer. 

 

Dean shudders in bed, and his hands are no replacement for Sam, but they’ve gotta be until they’re on the same page. 

  
  


-

  
  


Things aren’t going to get any better, Dean knew that from the get-go. From the time Sam got gnawed on, it was pretty obvious, so he starts taking catalogue of things that are unnecessary when Sam’s fingertips start to show bone. 

 

It’s like fabric has worn away from a well-used sofa, loved so much over time the upholstery just couldn’t take it anymore, and decided to retire from the rest slowly. Sam touching him then is strange, less Sam-like and Dean’s heart starts to break, but at least Sam still looks like Sam through the face. Even if he is gaunt and more haunting than Dean has ever seen him. He’s still fucking pretty. 

 

Dean steals kisses like Sam’s 14 again, only this time his brother chases for a different reason, one Dean is coming to terms with surprisingly easily. He holds Sam’s barebone hands in his that look so whole and healthy in comparison, and makes his decision. 

 

There are things he can do for Sam right now, and it’s always been Dean’s instinct to do anything Sam needs. Initially, after his tonguetip had gone, he had fooled himself into thinking he wasn’t okay with this, that this wasn’t who Sam wanted to be--but again, they’re past that. Now they’re on the same page, and can give each other what they want just like it used to be. 

  
  


-

 

Most of the butcher knives were predictably stolen or given away, but there are some fancy collectors items on the wall up in the house, mounted in a shadow box that Dean smashes before he retreats downstairs to the kitchen. 

 

The block is weathered and smooth in places, gouged in others--relatable--and it’s easiest to set his left pinky on the edge of the block so the rest of his fingers are safe. It’s too easy honestly, and Dean guesses it probably just goes to show how fucked he is that he doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t get a tremor until after the finger is severed and he’s bleeding on the butcher’s block like a thousand pigs before him. 

 

He leaves his pinky on the cutting board while he wraps up the rest of his hand just good enough that he won’t bleed out while he takes up his prize, and offers it to Sam. 

 

Two hands, slightly awkward, reach out and close around Dean’s like they’re going to have to pry the appendage from his hand, but his scrabbling bone-tipped fingers take it easily even if Dean didn’t  _ really  _ want to give it over. His hands are all slick with blood, but he doesn’t bother cleaning up until after Sam has cupped his palms to his face, until after he’s done crunching up Dean’s phalanx bones. 

  
  


-

  
  


Once he stitches himself up for the second time and downs a little vodka, Dean tows Sam up to his room, tucks him into bed in the spot that’s now perpetually empty because he’s not there every night, like usual. Dean’s a routine kinda guy, he’s got his side, Sam had his. 

 

Up here doesn’t smell like Sam because like a dog, he’s not allowed up here, most times, so now that he’s this close, Dean notices it. Cloying, sweet, but distant like the ache in his hand. 

 

He’s got Sam’s hair down, playing with it between the remaining fingers on his left hand that feel a little numb. It’s cold up here, and Sam is always cold too. 

 

“Was that...did that help?” He asks quietly, pillowtalk tender. Kisses on a scraped knee. 

 

Sam’s saucer-eyes are perpetually on the roam, but dart to Dean when he speaks, and that makes his heart jump. Schoolboy crush stupid, but that feels better than near-constant misery and hopelessness, so. He’ll take it. 

 

“That better, Sammy?” Dean’s whispering now in the little space between them, close and secret like it’s always been with them, secrets between brothers. Their whole life is a secret now. 

 

“More where that came from, okay? I promise.” 

 

Dean was made to take care of Sam, that’s what his life has been, and will continue to be to whatever end necessary. And he’s at peace with that. 

  
  


-

  
  


It’s been a little while since they’ve been outside, mostly because Dean’s afraid Sam will bolt, but. Some sun will do them both some good, or whatever. 

 

Sam doesn’t like the sun, flinches when he steps out onto the back patio after Dean, probably because the muscles in his eyes don’t work, so his pupils are stuck gaping open. His biology is strange, but he gets over it, like most things (except the tooth brushing). 

 

Dean sits on the porch steps while Sam shuffles around the yard, boot-toes catching in divots of dirt that make him stumble comically, but it’s worth it to watch him tilt his face skyward and keep it there for far too long. 

 

For once, his hair doesn’t look so dull, and his skin looks warmer just from the sun’s touch, so for a few split seconds it’s easy for Dean to pretend Sam is Sam again, that he’s just been horribly sick for a long, long time. Like they’re coming out of hibernation or something, but that flies away when Sam catches sight of a bird in the tree just a few feet above his head. 

 

More skin gets stuck to the bark than covers Sam’s hands when he’s done. 

 

Things aren’t all doom and gloom.

  
  


-

  
  


Dean does really well with nine fingers, so eventually he figures he only needs five, really. Plenty of people climbed fucking mountains with a lot less in the past, so why the fuck not, right? It might not have been a good idea to get doped up on more past-date meds and whatever alcohol he could get his hands on before he decides to take off his left hand, but. Whatever, in the end Dean doesn’t really care. 

 

He wraps a homemade tourniquet just above the bones of his wrist, and waits till he can’t move his hand before he starts in at the joints with a paring knife. Severing cartilage is miles easier than sawing through bone, especially if it’s yours, so Dean never understood why people just hacked at shit until it came off without taking some consideration first. He’s pretty sure he saved himself a great deal of pain, if not blood, by taking this route. 

 

It’s not choice or prime, but Sam treats it that way all the same, and Dean wanted desperately to watch Sam root around and pull the flesh from his metacarpals like he used to from chicken wings, but the blood loss gets him first. 

 

When he comes to, his pet Sam has returned, and he’s gnawing on the raw end of Dean’s radius like a Rottweiler with a soup bone, working with his molars to maybe break off a chunk or two. For a few too-long moments Dean can do nothing but watch, full of affection and searing pain. 

 

It’s a hard combination but he’s dealt with it before. 

 

And anyway, Sam looks happy. 

  
  


-

  
  


Dean doesn’t die on the kitchen floor, even if he would have been okay with it, but things go south quick from there. 

 

Sam had pulled off too much flesh from Dean’s wrist for him to be able to salvage it, so all he can do is bandage the bareboned stump and hope for the best. 

 

Maybe it meant he doesn’t really want to die, but when he cradles his arm to his chest and looks at his own blood hand-smeared all over the kitchen tile, he knows that’s not it. He just wanted to be conscious. He wanted to make sure Sam was good, Sam was happy, that this was enough for Sam. 

  
  


-

  
  


A fever sets in a day or two later, and saps Dean’s energy. He can’t lock Sam up, can’t close the doors between them to keep his scavenger from circling like a vulture, but he also can’t care. Anyway, he wants Sam to be there when he dies just like Dean had done for him, to get more out of his death than Dean had, which he certainly would. 

 

It’s not fun or good or pretty. His skin breaks out in sores, and he doesn’t have the strength to get out of bed for anything. The flies make their way upstairs, just as curious as Sam, wondering if they found somewhere else to lay their eggs. Dean doesn’t know, he doesn’t know much in the last few hours, but Sam is there. He’s there, and he’s chewing. 

 

“Sam,” Dean says, doesn’t know how many times. His stump-tongue had given him the tiniest of lisps. With his right hand he gropes at the air that shimmers like heat off of asphalt, even though Sam is slumped against his left side. Nothing weight. 

 

Dean gets a handful of Sam’s hair eventually, tugs too hard in his sickness that he pulls a handful of it free, but it gets the attention he wanted. 

 

“Sam,” he tries again, firm like the big brother, admonishing, look at me when I’m talking to you, boy. Dad would be pissed about alla this. 

 

Like a daydream, Sam crawls up over him, head tilted and eyes pale as ever, his mouth caked with clotted blood and hunks of half-chewed gore. It makes him look even more ashen, throws him into high contrast. 

 

“It’s okay, De,” his voice says, a fucking ghost from what feels like years ago, and Sam’s mouth is moving, but not with those words. “I’ll take care of you. ‘S gonna be okay, big brother, alright?” 

 

“Sure,” Dean sighs, head sagging to the side because he knows he’s hallucinating. Sam hasn’t spoken in months, he isn’t cognisant of anything anymore much like Dean right now. So he supposes it’s nice they’re in the same boat together for the time being. 

 

“Lay down with me.” His remaining fingers, browned with days-old blood and god knows what else, curling in Sam’s plaid shirt, another comical throwback to when things were Okay. 

 

Sam’s face is wet-cool when he smothers it against Dean’s neck, nuzzling in with too much force and teeth, but it’s a new sort of tender for them, so Dean smiles. He holds Sam with his right hand, left arm trying, but it’s swollen and stinging and festering. The skin probably just sloughed off when Sam took a bite, might not have even needed to bite like he does when he takes a hunk from Dean’s shoulder. He’s not as meaty as he used to be, muscle dropped off from disuse and constant starvation. 

 

Doesn’t matter now. 

 

It wasn’t how he had planned it, sooner than he’d wanted, but Dean is alright with this. He can still see, sort of, and the inflammatory response to the infection has all but numbed out any pain he might feel. Well, there was still pain, but it feels sort of secondary, far off, not nearly as bad, and totally worth it if it means he can see Sam like this. 

 

Bloody, yes, smeared with black and red and yellow and green and white, but he must be happy. This was what he wanted, has been wanting, and when Dean thinks about it, there was no better way to go. 

 

Telling someone you loved them was one thing, but eating them alive? 

 

It’s a fitting end, he thinks, and it’s probably where their lives would have ended up one way or another; the two of them, consuming, until there was nothing left of one another, inevitable. That’s how he wanted it. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from nicole dollanganger's extremely relevant song of the same name


End file.
